


The Things We Mourn Find Us Again

by CaptainJimothyCarter



Series: Tumblr Prompt Fics [37]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Depressed Peggy, Drabble, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Peggy Carter, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, Peggy Carter Needs a Hug, Peggy Carter has PTSD, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Endgame, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steggy - Freeform, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers is a tired man, We Die Like Men, no edit, stevepeggy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27002440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainJimothyCarter/pseuds/CaptainJimothyCarter
Summary: The world is teaching Peggy Carter a lesson and that's not to get close to anybody or she risks losing them. When an older Steve Rogers shows up on her doorstep, a handful of months after his death, she's convinced it's both him and not him at the same time.How could she ever get that lucky to have a second chance?
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Series: Tumblr Prompt Fics [37]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952281
Comments: 5
Kudos: 41





	The Things We Mourn Find Us Again

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was just sweater weather so I don't know where this came from.

Peggy’s bottom lip trembled as she picked up the folded sweater from where it laid in the contents of her suitcase. Everything in her life, in Steve’s life, had been combined to one small suitcase with its frayed corners, broken handles, and busted wheels. 

Everything she had left to remember Steve by laid in this suitcase. Things the public would never come to see, things that not even behind closed doors of the SSR will know, and perhaps even the Howling Commandos.

Though, the last one was a huge might.

The only other person who could know, now laid dead too. Having died just weeks ago before Steve’s frozen grave.

This was her first time in Brooklyn, a place she will be forced to call her home, a place she’d never get to know through Steve’s eyes, but through what memories she’s had of him. This is a place that she will make her own because she has to because the world has left her no choice.

If the world has a lesson it wants to teach her, then it’s doing so. She’s been stripped from all those that she holds dear to her heart. From Michael, her brother, having died shortly after her engagement party. Where he was not supposed to be at all, where he broke protocol just to surprise his little sister, and give her the unwanted advice she didn’t know she needed.

Where their last words had been hateful spite between them in a yelling argument that caused him to storm out of the house and never to be seen again. His letter will arrive a week later with his apology and reluctant dedication to her new to-be husband.

A day before the men in suits will arrive, where she will leave behind her wedding dress, and a mother left waiting.

The world has told her she is to hold no lovers, no person close to her heart. They have stripped her of a friend she didn’t know she needed. Of James Barnes, someone who’d never replaced Michael but could be close to her in that sense.

Someone who made her smile despite the world was crashing around them. Reminded her that she too was human and invaded her personal space when she didn’t want a soul near her.

His death had broke that facade in her and the only other person who’d seen past the cracks…

His sweater, the cream-colored, handknitted, aged, and soft sweater, that still lingered with just a hint of his musky, spicy scent laid in her hands. 

The tears burned Peggy’s eyes as she held the sweater to her face and crushed it against her chest, taking in a deep breath of dust and the scent of Steve to calm herself down. 

It will do no good to cry. She’s cried far too much recently, in private of her own quarters, when no one was looking at her. No one except Howard and the few times Phillips had seen her.

She never quite found the words to thank the man when he handed her an unmarked file in their cleanup of the office. Tucked into the contents of the file was something that shouldn’t be there. Steve’s photo.

Colonel Phillip’s way of telling her that he’s sorry for her loss and while he can’t outright say it, he understands loss as much as anyone. 

He’s had a family at one point, she’s learned through his drunken tales. A wife, two sons, a little girl. She doesn’t need to ask what happened to them, Peggy can read it in the lines of his face, the way his eyes will watch a little, blonde girl skip across the street with her mother, the way he plays with the wedding band that he’s never without.

He knows loss as much as either of them, if not more. 

In a way, she’s almost jealous. At least he had time, Steve and her? They’d only just begun.

And it’s selfish that thought, she knows it is. It’s a bitter brew of hatred and guilt that’s always bubbling just under the surface. That’s not her. That’s not who she should be. That’s not who Steve would want her to be.

What would he know? He’s dead.

They’d spent weeks on the Arctic before she was forced to come back to Brooklyn, Howard setting her up in a small flat under his name, promising someone named Jarvis will drop food off every day, while he’s gone until she’s back on her feet.

She almost didn’t take it, but Peggy realized she had no choice. She has no home to her name. Her mother had died at the start of the war, shortly after Michael’s death.

And it’s here, on this brand new bed that Howard had purchased for her, that she realizes she’s alone. 

Utterly and truly alone. 

The sob drags something deep, ugly, and dark inside of her. She doesn’t even feel it escape her lips. She feels it tug on her heart. She feels it shake her chest, the hot tear roll down her face. She cries into Steve’s sweater until she’s out of breath, face blotched red, and tears burning her eyes.

She cries until she can do no more but drag breath after breath, feeling her throat raw and aching, eyes raw from constantly wiping them.

She does the only sensible thing she can do and that’s to pull on Steve’s sweater, stuff the empty suitcase under the bed, and crawl under the covers.

She falls asleep to his scent, to the idea that he’s right there behind her, holding her close, the sound of October’s harsh weather, beating wind and rain against the window.

The days drag on by in a pattern that Peggy doesn’t even notice she’s fallen into. Every morning she wakes up, breakfast is under a tin covering outside her door. Some days its eggs and toast, other days its sausage and pancakes, or a variant of the few meals. She doesn’t eat much, more picks at it, until her appetite still comes back.

She goes to work at the SSR office, keeping her head down, ignoring the jabs, and jars of the fact she worked with Captain America. It’s a temporary office, this one in New Jersey until the one in Brooklyn opens up within the following week.

She’s looking forward to that week, a week of not having to go to work and face the public that’s still mourning Captain America’s loss. They’d never know. They’d never know the true pain that lays inside of her when she hears his name.

She goes to bed every night, wearing his sweater. It’s losing his scent and the terrifying thought fills Peggy of what will she do when it’s gone? There’s no way to get it back.

Half a week into her preparing to move to Brooklyn’s SSR office, Peggy finds herself awake in the middle of the night, after nodding off for a few hours on the couch.

The bed comes to be a place she can’t call home. Too large, too empty, too cold. The couch is comfortable because she can cocoon under a thick blanket, with the dying fire in the fireplace for light.

She’s confused as to what wakes her up, listening to the rain pounding on the window. It’s rained every night this week as if the world is telling her something.

That’s when she hears it, the sound of thunder when there is no lightning. It takes her frazzled brain a second too long to come to the realization that it’s not thunder but someone at her door.

Knocking-in three fast sets, followed by two, then four.

Her heart lurches to her throat.

That was...there was no way, no possible way. He was dead. He was dead and gone and Howard had even returned empty-handed. So how…?

Could her mind be playing tricks on her? Just exhaustion. Had to be a state of exhaustion and even as she thought it, Peggy couldn’t stop herself from touching the doorknob. The person on the other side, that thing is silent. She pressed her ear to the cool frame and nearly falls backward when the knocking starts again.

That’s when she hears it.

“Peggy.” 

This has to be a nightmare caused by her exhaustion. It has to be. Yet it sounds so real. She’d never forgive herself if she didn’t try.

Pulling the gun from the coffee table, Peggy slowly opens the door, the gun aimed at the figure in the doorway. It’s not until lightning streaks the sky that Peggy drops the gun with an audible gasp.

It’s him. It’s Steve.

It’s not her Steve, but it is him.

Her hand shakenly turns on the lamp to give him some light, taking one, two, three steps back until she almost falls over the ottoman and if it wasn’t for Steve’s quick reflexes, she would’ve had a hard ending. He catches her by her waist and uprights her and just as fast as he’s touched her, he lets go and stands with space between them.

Despite she holds no gun, his hands are up and the door behind them has shut. He’s soaked to the bone, she notes. His blonde hair flops in his face, his shirt is soaked through, to the point she can count his abs through his collard shirt. He looks stiff and nervous, the flowers in his hand are the ugliest, water drowned things she’s ever seen.

And yet, they couldn’t be more beautiful.

“I don’t...I don’t understand,” she breathed, lowering her hand from her mouth and trying to steal her emotions. “How-how are you…? Howard said you...he couldn’t…”

“He didn’t,” Steve said calmly and softly like he’s practiced this speech a hundred times over. He sets the flowers down as if it’s a weapon that lays between them and picks up her gun. He hands it back to her and that move alone, if Peggy has had any doubts on if this Steve is her Steve, it shows her that he’s hers.

“It’s a-a long story, Peggy. Can I come in? I promise I will answer every question you have but-but you have to let me finish talking, okay?” 

He’s certainly nervous, he’s stammering but there’s a sense about him, he’s more confident now. She can barely nod before he’s coming closer to her and instinct wise she backs up two steps.

Steve looks hurt, but keeps his distance, giving a timid smile. “I’ll put the kettle on, you sit, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” His face pinches at the expression and Peggy laughs, it’s taunt and tight, but it’s a laugh. “Wrong words, I know. Guess I always put my foot in my mouth around you.”

Fifteen minutes later, Steve’s in an old army issued shirt, his hair now dryer, with a mug of tea in his hands. Hers sits just in front of her, untouched despite Steve followed her rules to a T in making the perfect cuppa.

It’s unnerving how he’s sitting here on the couch, right beside her, and not touching her. That’s not the unnerving part. The unnerving part is that he’s here. Like he fits in this space, like he’s always fitted in here and belonged, and has been here the entire time.

Now that they’re both under better light, Peggy can make Steve out more. There’s graying hair at his temples. His shoulders sag as if he’s carried the weight of the world far one too many times. She can’t explain it but there’s a haunting look in his eyes, one that she’s seen in soldiers and herself, but Steve’s? It’s deeper, harder like he’s had to relive his worst day over and over and over again with no avail. 

Knowing Steve? He’s chosen to do so if it would save any other soul from the pain of having to do so.

“Howard didn’t find me,” Steve speaks up, looking down at the dark liquid in his mug, rather than at her. “I was found...roughly sixty-five or so years after I was frozen. The serum - it helped keep me alive, but it stripped me of all my strength. I had to learn how to function again, how to be a human being. It was like when I first got the serum, but slow instead of all at once. I had to learn how to walk, to often breathe at times, to gain muscle control over my own body. Not-not to mention my appetite, you always knew how hungry I was… I could barely stand to smell good, much less look at it. The exhaustion was the worst part, barely able to hold a conversation without...without passing out…”

Peggy wants to speak, she does. He looks at her as if expecting her to interrupt, but she doesn’t. She just gives him a polite smile to let him know she’s listening. Her hand slowly moves to touch him. Just a gentle tap on his shoulder, prove to herself he’s alive.

“I’m real, Peggy. I know it doesn’t seem like that, but I’m real. I don’t think…” He gives a hollow laugh to only a joke he knows the punchline to. “I don’t think anyone hurting this bad would be dead, but if there is a soul…” 

Out from the inside of his pocket, Steve pulls out the compass. She recognizes it at once, where he’s etched his initials into the backside. SGR. The thing is faded and rusted, the initials almost faded into the rust. When she opens it with shaky fingers, she sees her picture. It’s faded and barely recognizable, but it’s there.

This is her Steve.

She holds the cold compass close to her chest and looks up at him with wide eyes. It’s Steve’s turn to smile this time. 

“You see after they found me, I was able to...join or-or start...hell, I don’t even know anymore...I was with this team called the Avengers…”

And so Steve tells her the tale. This utterly ridiculous tale of how he joined the Avengers, how he leads them into great battle after battle. How they’ve saved the world countless times. How he joined SHIELD and tore it down from the inside out. How Sargeant Barnes is alive and under the product of Hydra. How the team saved the world one last time until they didn’t. Until they lost everyone…

Until Steve lost everyone and bore each and every soul lost as a weight on his shoulders that he was crushing under.

Until he, eventually lost her too…

Until they won it all back. Until time travel was invented until he saw her. Older, fiercer, yet leading Shield as a Director, commanding the men with such fierce abandonment of authority that they had no choice but to do as she says.

Until Steve had realized he still loved her. He’d never stopped. He’d fooled himself into thinking he was content. 

Until the end of the world’s battle came and they’d won so much, yet lost so much more.

Until he returned to her, with a promise of a new life on his tongue, and knowing just where he needs to be.

She wants to yell at him. She wants to even slap him for being late. She wants to run away from him and never return. This isn’t real. This has no way of being real and yet, it is.

It’s such an outrageous tale full of enough details peppered here and there that Peggy is forced to believe. Because it’s from Steve.

Because it’s a man whose so hurt and sickly and he can’t even see it himself. The pain he looks at her like her touch could heal a broken man, if even by an inch.

Peggy’s moving before she can help it. The sweater is off, revealing a slip and she slips it on over his body like she’s dressing a toddler. She kneels between his legs and takes his face in her hands. There are more lines than she remembers. He’s certainly older. This isn’t her Steve and yet, this is the Steve that came back to her.

“I’m not him,” Steve whispers as if reading her mind. “I can never be him again, Peggy. I can understand if you do not want me, but I-”

Her kiss shuts him up before he can put his foot in his mouth. He melts against her in a sense of relief that seems to flood them both. Her, for knowing and proving Steve is real and for Steve, proving that she still loves him.

“You are him. I love you, Steven, rather you are the man who’d gone into the ice or-or came back to me. I love you.” 

She shouldn’t trust him so easily. She should throw every single question at him from the book and make up a few of her own, run him through the wringer, but Peggy doesn’t need to.

Inside, she knows it’s Steve in the way he looks up at her with tears in his eyes and the way he clings to the hand that’s still on his face.

He’s desperate for human contact in a manner that not even he knows. 

“You’re home,” she whispers as their foreheads touch and even now she’s crying. “You came home to me, darling. You came home.”

“I did,” Steve whispers in response, wrapping her in his arms and tucking her face against the soft wool of the sweater. “And I promise I won’t leave again.”

“Good,” Peggy whispers despite the sob as he cradles her against his chest. “Because then I won’t forgive you if you take your sweater from me. It was the only thing - one of the only things I had…”

“I’ll wear them all for you,” Steve whispers, such a ridiculous notion that makes her heart lurch into her throat. Or it could be the fact he’s carrying her to the bedroom. “So you can remember me, if even for a second when we’re separated by just a minute. I’ll never let you be alone nor forget me again.”

Peggy can’t reply as she breathes Steve in. It’s him. The harsh, spicy scent that’s invading her nose, embedding on the sweater. It’s truly Steve and he was finally home.


End file.
